As a lawyer I once specialized in refugee law, or, more precisely, asylum law, which is the term for the law governing refugees who present themselves to the government of a country of which they are not citizens, seeking permission to stay.

So it is interesting to speculate on what grounds Russia has decided to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum. As a practical matter, with these sort of "show" asylum grants, the country in question usually isn't paying strict attention to the law about whether someone qualifies as a "refugee", anyway. But just for fun, here is the legal definition of a "refugee" in international law: a person outside of his or her home country who has a well-founded fear of returning to his or her home country because of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

In any event, today's found poem is taken from the NYT article about Russia's recent decision.

Asylum

Brushing aside pleas and warnings from American officials, Russia granted Edward J. Snowden temporary asylum and allowed him to walk free out of a Moscow airport.

Russia’s decision, which infuriated American officials, ended five weeks of legal limbo for Mr. Snowden, the former intelligence analyst wanted by the United States for leaking details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

Even as his leaks continued with new disclosures from files he leaked, Mr. Snowden now has legal permission to live and even work in Russia for as long as a year, safely out of the reach of American prosecutors.

Mr. Snowden now has an international platform to continue defending his actions as a whistle-blower exposing wrongdoing by the American government.

In a statement issued by WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization that has been assisting him since he made his disclosures in June, Mr. Snowden thanked Russia and accused the Obama administration of disregarding domestic and international law since his disclosures.

But he added that “in the end, the law is winning."

The case raises interesting questions of when and why "prosecution" sometimes is treated as "persecution." More fundamentally, to my mind, it demonstrates how governments continue to use asylum status as a political tactic, rather than granting it purely on the basis of humanitarian need.

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Make that "labyrinthine"; I started typing the word into Google to do a quick spell check before posting my comment. And Google supplied the "ian" ending before I could finish typing, so I figured okay, must be "ian." It has nagged at me all day, though, so I just looked up the word in an actual dictionary. Guess what? Google was wrong :)

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The case is a really interesting situation that happened during the second "red scare" in the U.S., in the 1950s. Mezei, a Romanian/Hungarian man had lived here in the US legally for 25 years, as a permanent resident (i.e., he had what everybody calls a "green card," though it is not green now). He left the US to try to visit his dying mother in Romania but was denied entry and then had trouble getting permission to leave Hungary. He finally got permission to leave Hungary, and was granted a visa at the American consulate for entry to the U.S.

But when he actually arrived at Ellis Island, the U.S. government denied him entry, as a threat to national security. The government refused to disclose why it thought Mezei was a threat. Unfortunately, no other country in the world was willing to take Mezei in, especially now that the U.S. deemed him a threat but refused to say why.

Mezei sued, demanding a chance to hear the evidence against him and respond, to try to prove it was safe to let him go back to his home in New York. He argued that keeping him on Ellis Island was depriving him of his liberty without "due process of law," in violation of the constitution.

As you'll see in the poem, Mezei lost the case. The court's opinion has a single chilling line that has always stood out to me, from the first time I read it: "Whatever the procedure authorized by Congress is, it is due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned."

The amount of UNH students who are unaware of what is going on in the Ukraine is too damn high. While sipping on $1 beers and munching on $0.25 wings Thursday night, I explained to my friends what is happening in the Ukraine. With the aid of plenty body movement and letting my hands speak too, I was able to not lose their interest within the first minute. It’s important to know what happens around you, even if you’re not in near proximity of events with an impact. For instance, the situation in the Ukraine doesn’t only affect Ukrainians. As you read on, you will realize that global political relations, international laws and economy are influenced as well.

Plus, it’ll make you sounds smart when you talk to people older than you. Knowing about current events can help you form your own, polarized opinions that set you apart from the rest. Here’s what you need to know about the Ukrainian revolution.

The Ukraine had been under Soviet control back in the glory days of the Soviet Union. Ever since the union didn’t work out, the country had been trying to get back on its financial feet but struggled. For a while now, many Ukrainians aspired to join the European Union in order to prosper its economy and take advantage of other benefits of being a member. Imagine the anger felt by these people when President Yanukovych rejected a far-reaching accord with the EU in November 2013 because of his strong ties with Russia. Overnight, protests broke out into the Independence Square, known as the Maidan, in the capital of Kiev. The BBC reports that since it began, developments include, “police attacks on student protesters, severe new anti-protest laws, and the abduction and beating of opposition activists – caused the demonstrations spread and intensify.”